Executive Airlines Flight 5404
Aerospatiale ATR-42-300 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while standing
From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU) to Mercedita International Airport (PSE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99FA012
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Aerospatiale ATR-42-300
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale ATR-42
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N143DD
- Operator
- Executive Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU)To Mercedita International Airport (PSE), Ponce, PR
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- On ground/water collision with object
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Parking brakes, not verified
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of San Juan, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot gave the ground marshaller the hand signals to disconnect ground power and to pull the chocks after a normal start of No. 2 engine. The ground marshaller disconnected the power cord and secured it to the ground power cart, and when she pulled the nose wheel chocks, the nose tire ran over her foot. The airplane taxied forward until the No. 2 propeller collided with the ground power cart and ignited a fire in the No. 2 engine that spread to the ground and under the aircraft. The flight attendant commanded a passenger emergency evacuation, absent any communications from the cockpit, and three passengers received minor injuries from tripping and falling on the tarmac. The airport fire department extinguished the fire 3 minutes after its initiation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to verify that the parking brake was applied prior to engine start, and the resultant inadvertent movement of the aircraft and collision with the ground power cart once No. 2 was started.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99FA012
- Event ID
- 20001211X11299
- Case number
- MIA99FA012
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6c09da9b24c4942252ed8bfe4bab15907dd40999e4d660d1943b6021440673ce; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:03:27.599Z.